[kln2-devel] choose your task?

[Marek W. <Mar...@fu...>]

Hi e-body,

New enticements are added to the never-ending volunteer hunt.
Let me know if you get seduced - I'll mail you details and
suggestions.

If you have any ideas of other improvements (especially little
tings, that would make big difference) let me know about it
even if you don't have time to code it - someone else might.:)

Regards,
Marek

PS. I marked whether to my taste a task is easy, medium or hard.
I also marked things that I think I'll do soon.


=========== hot: pitch input improvements

* write pitch input settings dialog; set up things that are now
hard-coded (8/16bit, sample length, silence level ...) + some
extra settings (for example: sounds lower than D0 [D-3 in the
debug output] should be disregarded - this would eliminate some
noise) [easy]

* extra slider for guitar tuner, showing recognized tune on an
"axis" (is the tune really far from what it should be?) [hard -
I'd like you to design a new nice widget for this]

* maybe: move the guitar tuner "speedometer" into a canvas -
this would enable displaying extra info easily (eg. the name of
the tune, now visible above the "speedometer" might be more a
part of the picture) [easy]

* add extra tunings (there is even some space for a combobox in
the top-left corner of the guitar tuner window, see? :) [easy]

* add a checkanswer(int pitch) method to kln2; for now when
there is a C1 note visible and you pluck a C0 tune it is
considered a right answer :( [easy]

* when a tune is recognized a signal is raised; write a slot for
pianoKeyboard to handle it [medium]

= guitar tuner needs a help/about button and dialog - I will
write this

= all this has to be described in docs - I'll do this

[Not yet:] since one can answer now with real guitar it would be
nice to have a fret-by-fret exercises; but I think we need
accidentals first (or else we'll not get out of the 0th fret...)

=========== other urgent matters:

* saving config data - My, this is pending for half a year
now... the task would be to simplify the way config data is
saved, and to make it more error-proof; to simplify the
task, ignore old saved files [medium]

= move the old staff canvas from KLearnNotes2 to a new,
Exercise-based class (I'll do this)

=========== translations:

* this would require a full e-mail, but in short: because of
possibility of an easy port to M$ Windows (see the end of this
e-mail) I think we shouldn't switch from Qt i18n to KDE po/pot.
On the other hand there are strong translators groups for KDE,
and they would probably eagerly help with translating our
interface to tens of different languages (Javier has already
contacted the Spanish team and they said "OK, just send us the
.po file"). Now both file formats can be translated one into
another; but it doesn't look perfect: there is a well defined
[probably minor] problem to sort out... Let me know if you would
like to dig into it. [maybe easy, maybe medium... trial and
error or digging into i-net for info]


=========== things maybe not that urgent but either fun or important

* make the game more playable (an explosion when note hits the
clef? maybe a note might smile when you answer right and get sad
when it hits the clef? maybe some kind of scoring and highscore?
__new_ideas_are_very_much_welcome

* make piano exercise really work [hard]

* make piano graphics better (3D look) [easy; but takes both
using a graphics program (gimp?) and coding]

* mixer interface common to voice recognition and all midi
output and pitch input [medium]

* volume slider on a toolbar or easily accessible non-modal
"mixer" popup dialog [easy]
        * master volume
        * midi volume
        * mic volume
        * i-gain

- zoom in/out items in MenuOptions; make sure all widgets are
run-time scalable (run current kln2 with --scale=7 option to see
what's this about) [easy/medium]


=========== boring clean-ups

* are tooltips wherever they are important?

* is kln2 interface consistent?

* the code: any extra assertions? dangerous places? things
missed?

* search for things that are created but not deleted (e.g. those
which do not inherit QObject, or have 0 as a parent)

* search for kdelibs classes in our code: how can they be
substituted with basic Qt? Trolltech is getting more relaxed on
Qt licensing. For example there is full M$ Windows Qt version
added to one of Qt books, with a noncommercial license! We could
hit M$ Windows if we get rid of all kde classes. :D

-- 

     \/   /|\  Marek Wieckowski
  #####  | | |
 = . . =  \|/  Institute of Theoretical Physics
    U      |   Warsaw University
  / ~ \___ |
 <|   |    |
  > . <    |   http://www.fuw.edu.pl/~wiecko
 <<___>>   |   http://klearnnotes2.sourceforge.net